European governments haven’t got a clue how to implement cloud services. So say the EU's own cybersecurity experts.
ENISA (the European Network and Information Security Agency) has released a report on the adoption of something it calls “Gov Cloud”, defined as “a deployment model to build and deliver services to state agencies ( …

David Cameron’s plans to treat us all like children unless we opt out looks likely to be scuppered by new EU rules on net neutrality.
Two years ago the PM vowed to stop children stumbling across online pornography by making parental filters the default standard for internet service providers (ISPs). Sky Broadband introduced its …

A fretful Twitter has told investors that it may be forced to shell out cash on IT infrastructure in Europe if the Safe Harbor pact between the EU and the US collapses.
The profit-shy company, which derives most of its revenues from advertising, revealed its fears in Twitter's annual report published on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, it …

A new report says the companies whose complaints have been included in the European Union's formal antitrust charges against Google have been revealed, even though the European Commission is still keeping the official list of complainants under wraps.
According to the report by Reuters, at least 30 companies filed complaints …

Thanks to a 10-hour meeting, it appears that EU negotiators have done the unexpected: created net neutrality rules that keep both digital rights activists and telco operators happy.
Last Tuesday, after three months of toing and froing between member states and the European Parliament, a last-ditch political deal was pushed …

The EU will take a big step towards finalising measures to protect its citizens' privacy today, as negotiators from member states, the European Commission, and the European Parliament will come together for the first time to thrash out an agreement on the EU’s planned data protection law.
The Parliament agreed its position on …

Europe must stick together or the US will suck out our brains data; so warned Europe’s digi chief Gunther H-dot Oettinger on Tuesday.
Speaking at the European Commission’s big flagship Digital4EU event, he reiterated the importance of the proposed Data Protection Regulation.
Referring to Google and Facebook, Oetti said: “They …

EU digi-chief Gunther H-dot Oettinger poured fuel on rumours that the European Commission will haul Google over the coals with antitrust charges this week - and now it's happened.
Backing up comments he made to a German weekly newspaper on Sunday, H-dot Oetti said: “We have to look more critically at the market position and …

A lawsuit against Google over alleged search manipulation has been adjourned, after a judge ruled it was "inappropriate" to hold the trial while the European Commission was pursuing its anti-trust case.
Court News UK is reporting that a High Court trial "between Infederation, the operator of Foundem.co.uk, and Google, has been …

The European Commission is considering creating an EU-wide complaint procedure for people whose websites are wrongly blocked by internet service providers.
Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová said in a letter that “the Commission is analysing the need for a specific initiative on notice-and-action procedures to bring legal …

A top US law enforcement commissioner has claimed European data protection authorities are too worried about helping consumers instead of robustly enforcing privacy laws.
Speaking at CPDP2015 in Brussels, Julie Brill, privacy commissioner for the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defended the US approach to protecting privacy …

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) might be all about privacy, but has warned politicians and public figures it will not be helping protect their dodgy deals.
The EDPS’ new guidelines for public bodies encourage EU institutions to balance transparency in the interests of the public against the data protection rights …

The European Parliament’s legal committee on Tuesday approved a non-legislative and non-binding report by Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda by a majority of 23-2 - albeit with several substantial amendments.
Reda's report examines the EU’s current copyright law, the so-called Infosec Directive from 2001.
A new draft directive is …

The European Commission has set 27 July as D-Day for its decision on the Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent takeover.
The €15.6 billion deal, first announced in April, was waved through US approval by the Department of Justice last week.
The European Commission's Website doesn't say much, but does at least give us the EC's anticipated …

Microsoft and University of Nottingham researchers say developers should be taught to design privacy and security using flash cards if they find wordy regulation documents onerous.
The team including Redmond's Ewa Luger and the University's Lachlan Urquhart, Tom Rodden, and Michael Golembewski say regulation is out-of-touch and …

The EU has decided to make friends with China despite earlier worries that it may have been giving an illegal boost to telco manufacturers.
On Monday, the European Commission decided to drop an investigation into alleged illegal subsidies and dumping of telecommunications equipment by Chinese exporters.
Following “intensive …

According to local media reports Thursday, German intelligence agency BND (the Bundesnachrichtendienst) has helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) spy on the European Commission and French authorities since 2008.
German officials themselves were not targeted because of a NSA-BND deal signed in 2002. The revelations have …

The EU, and several of the world's biggest and most powerful tech companies, made little progress in finding ways to combat terrorists' use of online media, following a meeting and dinner on Wednesday night.
EU government ministers met Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft representatives.
Although terrorist groups (most …

Security and privacy are not mutually exclusive says Europe’s privacy watchdog – and people should stop saying they are.
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Giovanni Buttarelli, told a Brussels conference he was concerned that “the objective of cyber-security may be misused to justify measures which weaken protection …

Europe’s digi-chief has spoken out about net neutrality rules emerging from America, and mobile networks favoring particular websites over others.
Speaking at an event in Brussels this week, Digital Vice President of the Commission Andrus Ansip said he sees no difference between the EU and the FCC in the US in their approach to …

Steelie Neelie has warned Germany – for the fifth time – that if it doesn’t sort out its proposals on mobile termination rates, the Commission will take legal action.
The European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda may be on her way out, but Neelie Kroes has seemingly reached the end of her tether with the German telecoms …

Opinion
EU countries that set their own national data retention laws must ensure those rules are in line with the EU's Privacy and Electronic Communications (e-Privacy) Directive, according to a new legal opinion.
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) ruled last April that specific EU rules on data retention by telecoms providers, set …

A European deal to share airline travellers’ personal information with Canada could be chucked out after MEPs asked the ECJ to intervene.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament voted by 383 to 271 to refer the EU-Canada PNR (air passenger data) agreement to the European Court of Justice over concerns that such mass collection and …

New cars sold in the EU from March 2018 will have to phone the authorities if they think they've been in a crash.
A watered-down version of the eCall proposal has found favour with the EU Commission, meaning when a car or light van crashes, it will automatically summon the emergency services.
It will use the emergency number of …

Mark Zuckerberg may have bigged up Facebook's latest app release on Monday, but one thing was missing from the vomit-inducing, fluffy coverage around Moments: it won't be coming to Europe any time soon.
The reason? Facial recognition technology is a key element of the app.
So – given that Moments would be about as useful as a …

EU institutions have finally got the memo about it being a good idea to pinpoint and fix security vulnerabilities.
Next year the European Parliament has allocated up to €1m for a project to audit free software programs in use at the European Commission (EC) and the EU Parliament in order to find and repair potential weaknesses …

Google doubled its EU lobbying efforts last year – but the real figure is likely to be much higher than it has declared, as it doesn’t include money spent on ongoing disputes.
The Californian data slurper and hoarder overtook [paywall] Goldman Sachs as the biggest lobbyist in the US last year and is the biggest Federal lobbying …

The EU’s chief competition regulator alleged today that Google is illegally abusing its dominant position in the search market.
Antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager has now taken the first official step towards fining the ad-slinging search monster.
“I am confident that Google has artificially boosted its position in the …

No, your car won’t be spying on you, say MEPs, but it will call you an ambulance should you need it.
The European Parliament has reached a deal with national ministers to introduce a mandatory “eCall” system for all new cars from April 2018.
However, although the system would automatically call the 112 emergency number in the …

EU digi-chief Gunther H-dot Oettinger has been characteristically clear as mud in explaining his plans for copyright reform.
Speaking on Wednesday night to the European Parliament’s working group on copyright, H-dot seemed to call for a so-called ancillary copyright law. This type of law, which requires news aggregators to pay …

After Kaspersky revealed the so-called Equation Group’s HDD-snooping malware, the European Commission says it's “up to member states to take appropriate measures” to deal with cyber-badness on their patches.
With the spyware closely resembling Stuxnet, Kaspersky researchers have concluded that the US National Security Agency is …

Danish authorities look set to bring back mandatory internet session logging despite an EU ruling last year that blanket data retention is illegal.
Last May the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concluded that the EU Data Retention Directive was “a particularly serious interference with fundamental rights”, meaning countries …

The EU will tackle copyright infringement and revisit telecoms regulation in 2016, along with a raft of new bureaucracy and spending. Controversially, it aims to further “harmonise” VAT and contract law across EU member states.
The draft appears to have been written before last week’s decision by Commissioner Vestager to file an …

The European Parliament's largest grouping of MEPs, the European People's Party group, has snuffed out a bogus copyright crusade. The centre-right EPP, which has 214 MEPs, slammed inaccurate media reports for suggesting that new copyright laws would "break the internet".
"There is no such EU law on the table and it is highly …

Gaffe-prone Commissioner Günther H-dot Oettinger is at it again. In statements to the German press (he rarely talks to anyone else), Oetti directly mocked his boss Andrus Ansip’s desire to end geo-blocking.
Former Estonian prime minister Ansip – known as The Robot back home – has made eradication of geo-blocking his prime goal. …

A class action against Facebook over alleged breaches of European privacy laws is being heard in a Vienna district court today.
Austrian law graduate Max Schrems and 25,000 other Facebook users are suing the social network. They allege that Facebook violated European citizens' “fundamental rights” (defined in the European …

Civil rights groups are claiming the EU Commission has already broken its promises on lobby and reporting transparency, with a framework for lobbyists containing no legally binding elements now set to be implemented.
Following his confirmation hearing in October, Frans Timmermans, number two at the EC, vowed to create a …

The EU's warring digi-chiefs — Vice President Andrus Ansip and Commissioner Gunter H-dot Oettinger — finally seem to be singing from the same hymn-sheet.
On Tuesday, both gave speeches highlighting the need for the wider industry to “get digital” as well as bemoaning the Digital Skills Gap™.
Ansip and Oettinger quoted the same …

A ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Thursday puts the onus on tech companies to prove that a product was not faulty at time of sale if it malfunctions in the first six months.
In the words of the ECJ: “Any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within six months of the delivery of goods is, in principle, to be …

The European Parliament is divided over new efforts to revive a plan to slurp citizens' travel info.
The Passenger Name Records (PNR) system was thought dead after the parliament rejected it in 2013, but following the Charlie Hebdo attack national governments have again insisted that the only way to prevent such tragedies is to …

The European Parliament adopted the “Reda report” on copyright yesterday.
Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda’s report on the functioning of the current Infosoc Directive is widely seen as a bellwether for the coming copyright legislation overhaul. Digi Commissioner Gunther H-dot Oettinger is due to present his proposals before the …

Comment
Gaffe-prone Gunther is at it again. This time the EU Digi-Commissioner Gunther H-dot Oettinger has described the enforcement of "uniform" net neutrality as "Taliban-like".
Unsurprisingly digital rights activists have not been pleased at being compared with a fundamentalist organisation judged by the UN to be responsible for the …

Games console manufacturers have agreed a deal with the European Commission that lets them off the hook for meaningful rules on energy efficiency.
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have persuaded the Commish not to include their products in the EcoDesign Directive and to instead rely on a voluntary agreement.
Although the Commission …

Copyright laws in every EU country should be the same, the European Copyright Society (ECS) has said.
In a letter to the European Commission's digital commissioner Günther Oettinger (4-page 499KB PDF), the academic think tank on copyright said "actual Union-wide unification … of copyright" as opposed to simply further …

Tech lobbyists trying to water down EU laws may soon find themselves in the spotlight, if new EU Commission supremo Frans Timmermans gets his way.
The Dutch politician – who is set to take up the EC's number two spot next month with the official title “First Vice-President in charge of Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional …

Irish low-cost airline Ryanair can stop whomever it wishes from scraping content, according to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
PR Aviation – which runs price comparison websites WeGoLo.com and flylowcost.com – had sought to use the EU’s Database Directive to prove that Ryanair was wrong to impose contractual terms …

Europe’s new digi chief has told telecoms ministers to get their act together and deliver strong net neutrality rules.
Andrus Ansip, European Commission veep for all things digital, said he had “no illusions” that this would be easy, adding: “I really hope that an agreement can be reached over the coming months. Otherwise, I …

Update
eBay has come galloping to Google’s rescue in its EU anti-trust case... if you define a “market” in the way the Chocolate Factory wants.
eBay chief executive John Donahoe told the Financial Times that in the shopping sector it is a major competitor to Google, thus backing up the Chocolate Factory’s argument that it is not …

After months of mixed signals and confusion it appears that the European Commission will make a U-turn and keep the role of Chief Science Advisor.
Last November, Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) Anne Glover revealed that the Commish planned to scrap the role, which is “to provide independent expert advice on any aspect of science …

Germany's BND spy agency spied on European politicians and enterprises at the behest of the NSA for over a decade.
Der Spiegel reports (in German) that for years the NSA sent its counterparts at the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst – Germany's Federal Intelligence Service) thousands of so-called selectors – IP addresses, emails, and …